East Tennessee grows its own Thanksgiving

Dave Waters of River Ridge Farms in Decatur, TN raises small batches of heritage turkeys.

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Verlinda and Dave Waters are raising a small batch of turkeys for the holidays at their cattle farm, River Ridge Farms in Decatur, Tennessee, on Monday, November 13, 2017. The turkeys are kept in a covered pen to keep from flying away.(Photo: Saul Young/News Sentinel)Buy Photo

The Waterses, owners of River Ridge Farms, raised 11 turkeys this year. They sell to a few regular customers, and a few drawn by word of mouth; but by mid-November not all the birds were committed.

Dave and his wife, Verlinda, farm 300 rolling acres an hour or so south of Knoxville, just outside Decatur. The farm’s primary product is beef cattle, and they also raise pigs, honeybees and a few chickens, she said.

"We only use organic feed for chickens and turkeys,” Dave Waters said.

They keep the turkeys in Quonset-shaped, wood-framed wire pens covered by gray tarps; the floorless pens are moved daily to clean, fresh grass.

Predator protection

One reason for the enclosed pens is protection from predators. Another East Tennessee farmer kept a few turkeys as pets, only to have them all killed by an opossum; yet another kept a few birds, but twice saw them eaten by coyotes.

Coyotes and raccoons threaten the turkeys at River Ridge Farms, and there have been a couple of nearby sightings of bobcats, Verlinda Waters said.

Verlinda and Dave Waters are raising a small batch of turkeys for the holidays at their cattle farm, River Ridge Farms in Decatur, Tennessee, on Monday, November 13, 2017. The turkeys are kept in a covered pen to keep from flying away. Saul Young/News Sentinel

Though the climate and terrain can’t support cranberry bogs, many fruit and vegetable dishes common on Thanksgiving tables do come from Tennessee farms, Vandergriff said.

“We can grow sweet potatoes. We’re not a large sweet potato-growing area, but we can certainly grow them,” he said. Mississippi, Louisiana and North Carolina have sandier soil, preferred by large and common sweet potato varieties; but smaller, differently-colored breeds can be found at local farmers’ markets.

“Those are the things that you don’t see in large-scale production,” Vandergriff said.

Collard and turnip greens, radishes and black-eyed peas all come from East Tennessee farms, he said.

“We have broccoli coming in this time of year. Cauliflower, cabbage,” Vandergriff said. “And of course we certainly have apple production here. Those are coming in now.”

Flight risks

The Waterses have raised turkeys for more than a decade, Verlinda Waters said. They used to sell them at farmers’ markets in Knoxville and Chattanooga, but now only sell privately.

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Verlinda Waters of River Ridge Farms checks in on the turkeys she is raising on Monday, November 13, 2017.(Photo: Saul Young/News Sentinel)

Richardt Visser, owner of Circle V Poultry outside Sneedville, said he has raised poultry “long as I can remember” but has only sold turkeys for four years.

“My main thing is chickens,” he said. He keeps about 2,000 of those, supplying a couple dozen area groceries with eggs, he said.

Visser decided to give turkeys a try after seeing farms further north, and started out with just 15 birds, he said. This year Circle V raised about 300 turkeys.

“I had a few different breeds. I had the heavy ones, the more commercial ones; and then the traditional ones, more like wild turkeys,” he said.

“Most of my turkeys go to the Three Rivers Market there in Knoxville,” Visser said. “We have an arrangement way in advance for what they think they’re going to need.”

Stores around Knoxville lacked local suppliers; other turkeys at Three Rivers come from as far as California, he said.

Visser also sells to a co-op store in Boone, Tennessee; to a few individuals; and this year he’s supplying the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner at Blackberry Farm resort outside Maryville.

“I’m excited about that,” he said.

The Waterses and Visser agree that raising turkeys isn’t easy. Even after the birds get big, they have to be zealously defended from predators such as coyotes, Visser said.

“They won’t just eat one (turkey). They’ll just go in and kill every one for fun,” he said.

Heirloom or heritage breeds are closer to wild turkeys – which means they can still fly, so Visser has to trim their wing feathers. Sometimes that isn’t enough.

“Matter of fact, I just lost two here at the slaughterhouse,” he said. “They took to the woods.”

Limited options

Normally, Visser would wait until about a week before the holiday to have his turkeys killed and processed, but the North Carolina slaughterhouse he has used before suddenly closed, he said. Other regional facilities are already booked up, so he had to drive 300 miles to a small operation near Pembroke, Kentucky, which apparently scheduled a special day open just for him.

There aren’t many slaughterhouses of any type in this area, but there are particularly few for poultry, Vandergriff said – at least not large-scale ones, which tend to pay little and employ many recent immigrants.

There are provisions for small-scale farms to slaughter their own poultry, but regulations for selling to big chain grocery stores are rigorous and the process is expensive, he said.

As a result, locally-grown poultry is likely to be sold direct at farmers’ markets, sold online, or at smaller retailers and cooperatives, Vandergriff said. There is also a growing demand for locally-sourced foods at independent restaurants, he said.

Not many places will process turkeys and chickens, Dave Waters said. Big producers like Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride have their own facilities, but small farmers have few options.

But a fellow farmer in Benton is certified to do small-scale on-farm processing, so that’s where they’ll take theirs this year.

"Normally, if we had larger numbers, we'd be traveling to Bowling Green,” Verlinda Waters said. Last year, they raised 30 turkeys, and so made the drive to Kentucky to SS Enterprises, an independent poultry-processing plant.

The Waterses expect they will have a few turkeys left to sell for Christmas dinners, but those will be frozen, not fresh.

"Everything gets processed at once,” Dave Waters said.

Time and money

The Waterses bought their heritage breed chicks in April, keeping them in a brooder for a few weeks before moving them to an outdoor pen. The fully-grown birds will probably go for $5 per pound if they weigh less than 20 pounds, or $4.75 per pound if they weigh over 20, Dave Waters said.

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Dave Waters is raising a small batch of heritage turkeys at their cattle farm, River Ridge Farms in Decatur, Tennessee, on Monday, November 13, 2017.(Photo: Saul Young/News Sentinel)

Had they bought a commercial broad-breasted breed of turkey, the Waterses could have waited until around the start of July and still had 20- to 25-pound birds by Thanksgiving, he said.

Visser said his turkeys, roaming on grass, are more expensive to raise than factory-farmed birds.

“They probably go for $4.50 to $5 per pound at the end of the line,” he said. “It is a niche. People that buy a pasture-raised turkey – not everybody’s going to want to buy that, I guess, because it is a rather expensive bird.”

Raising turkeys is “like babysitting,” Visser said.

“They like to eat and they like to sleep,” he said. By the time it’s grown, a turkey will go through about four times its body weight in feed, he said.

Turkeys require more intensive care than chickens do, especially while young, Visser said. Temperature must be carefully controlled, and they must be kept inside until they’re about the size of an adult chicken, he said.

The heaviest breeds have to be bought in April or May, while it’s still cold outside, to grow in time for the holiday, Visser said.

Broad-breasted turkeys he can buy in August, but they’re so unintelligent that chicks will actually die of hunger and thirst unless another bird demonstrates how to eat and drink, Visser said. This year he put some Guineafowl in with the chicks, and that worked.

People want different size birds, so he spaces out buying chicks to have a variety of weights available, he said. Visser bought four batches this year, and isn’t keeping any back for Christmas dinners – he got no requests for those.